The trailer for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger promised an over-the top, prosthetic-laden Tom Cruise comedy—a caricature of an oil baron who has to save the world from his own actions. But despite an underwhelming opening at the box office, this sprawling, grotesque satire may be the most relevant film of the year.
Given the way the plot layers, key moments being recontextualized as the story progresses, this movie is difficult to market—or to review—spoiler-free. The broad strokes are that Digger is an oil tycoon whose drilling broke off an iceberg and sent it toward Europe, threatening to kill 100,000 people and displace more than a million. He’s a man who takes painstaking care of his sick cat while watching footage of the wildlife dying as a direct result of his actions. A man purely interested in profit, working alongside the US president, played by John Goodman, to save the world.
There are moments that are directly lifted from real life. It is an obvious, purposely heavy-handed satirization of Bush-era politics as well as the modern US political climate. Before getting into spoiler territory, the movie is also visually striking and ambitious with surreal set designs delivering pointed messages about the world the characters live in, with incredible performances from a star-studded cast.
If you want to go into the movie without any spoilers—and I really think you should—stop here and come back once you’ve watched it.
You expect to see a movie about a wealthy man grappling with a problem he created in the world, but Tom Cruise isn’t actually playing Digger Rockwell. He is playing Curtis Markson, an actor portraying Digger in a satirical play about the events that caused the climate crisis of this world. The play is directed by Hannah (played by Sophie Wilde) and funded by Kenny Rockwell, Digger’s nephew (played by Jesse Plemons).
This context comes in bits and pieces over the course of the movie, and each reveal shines a new light on the film—Goodman’s vulgar, larger-than-life president makes lowbrow jokes for laughs, his team members have minimal reactions to the potential death toll of the climate disaster and overreact when the financial cost is declared. When Europe is struck, the president and his team are eating popcorn and shouting at the screen, telling the victims—of a catastrophe that they created—to run, as though watching a slasher film. It is horrifyingly cartoonish.
The whole movie is a striking caricature, not just of politics but of making art today. The play only happens because Kenny decides to fund it, and while the play has elaborate sets, ample staff, and high-tech production, the theater has intermittent air-conditioning. The audience and director sweat inside while mold grows in the green room, and the world falls apart around this decadent spectacle.
In the context of a play written for the catharsis of the masses, it reveals a wider tension that runs throughout the movie—and which it argues about out loud. Cruise, playing Markson, hates the caricature of Digger, complaining to the director that he was a terrifying, intimidating, “seductive psychopath,” not a buffoonish cowboy. Hannah says it’s what the people need—a didactic, sensationalized, cathartic play with villains to laugh at.
Kenny also isn’t putting on the play as an act of remorse. Instead, it’s a deflection, placating the audience by giving them a villain in the past so they can accept the present, while he profits off of the catastrophe the play satirizes. When Curtis’ daughter, Hope, disappears after boarding a plane to come to the opening night, Kenny is able to locate her using only her phone number. He runs a security company—read as likely in the business of surveillance.
His decision to fund a play exaggerates the current tech and cultural climate. The tech moguls of today are increasingly seeking cultural clout, and culture is now largely dispersed through technology: Jeff Bezos owns Prime Video; Apple has Apple TV. This can be extended to how social media platforms—and the algorithms that govern them—are cultural gatekeepers of sorts.
As the movie nears its end, we see the conclusion of the play, where Digger dies, met with applause, tears of joy, and cheers from the crowd. Catharsis. The audience then puts on their breathing masks, filing out into a flooded, dystopian city. The catharsis, the spectacle, even Cruise’s agonizing over the portrayal of his character, are all meaningless out here.
Just like the audience of the play, I laughed throughout the movie. I laughed at lines that were clearly pulled from real events, at the gaudy recreation of people more than happy to convert breathable air into dollars and cents and their familiar deflections and excuses. When the lights came up and the credits rolled, I too left the theater and returned to a world where surveillance companies track us, where militaries remotely wage war with AI, and where the climate slips closer to further disaster.
This story originally appeared in WIRED Middle East.
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